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Personalization Previews

Previewing your personalized content is now easier and faster, using preview groups.

Today’s release has two parts, both supporting improved previewing of your content that contains HandlebarsHandlebars is Airship’s templating language for personalization. Handlebars expressions use double curly braces wrapped around a content template, ranging from a simple variable, e.g., {{first_name}}, to complex evaluations of personalization data. personalization:

  1. We added Preview groups — A preview group is an audience group you create for previewing personalized content in the dashboard. Wherever a personalization preview is available, you can select a preview group, and those users’ attributes will appear for any handlebars references to attributes.

    Preview groups are an update to test groups. When you create a group, the default type is Preview group, and you have the option to enable it as a Test group so the group members can receive test messages sent to the group. There are no other changes to how test groups are currently labeled or used within the dashboard.

  2. Personalization previews are now available by enabling Preview Data — Previously you would enable Sample Data and enter your own JSON data in order to create a personalization preview. We redesigned this to support the use of preview groups as well. Enable Preview Data, then either provide your own sample data, or select a preview group.

    • Using preview groups gives you the same previewing functionality as providing your own sample data, but no JSON knowledge is required.
    • Just like for sample data you provide, you can modify the JSON for a user in a preview group and see the changes in the preview.
    • We added Preview Data to more locations in the dashboard, including within the WYSIWYG editor.

Personalization Previews
Previewing a message using a preview group

Additional related changes:

  • In the dashboard navigation, Audience » Test Groups is now Audience » Preview and Test Groups.
  • Any Airship project user can create preview and test groups, except for those with the Reports Only access level.

Check out Previewing personalized content to get all the details. See also: Preview and test groups.